IEEPA Tariff Refunds: Your Questions Answered

IEEPA tariff refunds are the money CBP owes importers for duties collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act on entries from Feb. 3, 2025 through Feb. 24, 2026, after the Supreme Court held in Learning Resources (Feb. 20, 2026) that IEEPA did not authorize those tariffs. CBP puts the total at roughly $166 billion across more than 53 million entry summaries (Federal Register), and it is paying it back through a refund tool inside ACE called CAPE.

Below are the questions importers ask most, answered directly and built from CBP's own IEEPA refund FAQ page, CSMS messages, court filings and trade-press reporting. Everything here is current as of October 8, 2026.

Who is eligible for an IEEPA tariff refund? The importer of record (IOR) that paid IEEPA duties on entries in the Feb. 3, 2025 – Feb. 24, 2026 window is the party entitled to the refund. That covers the fentanyl-related tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, the "reciprocal" tariffs and the other country-specific IEEPA orders (BDO). No lawsuit is needed unless an entry has finally liquidated.

Which entries are excluded right now? As of October 2026, CBP excludes entries with AD/CVD cases pending liquidation, open or suspended protests, active drawback claims, USMCA duty-deferral entries, warehouse entry types 21 and 22, and entries where a surety paid the IEEPA duties (GHY International). This summer CBP put the money outside the process, with no timeline, at roughly $25 billion (Cato Institute).

Does this cover Section 122, Section 301 or Section 232 duties? No. CAPE refunds IEEPA duties only. The 10% Section 122 surcharge (Feb. 24 to July 24, 2026), the country-level Section 301 duties that replaced it and the 50% Section 232 steel and aluminum duties rest on other authorities. Some can come back through drawback on exported goods, not CAPE.

How much has CBP refunded so far? As of Sept. 11, 2026, CBP had accepted $134.7 billion in potential and certified refund claims and sent $122 billion to Treasury for payment, interest included (GHY International). CBP had not published newer totals as of Oct. 8.

What is CAPE? CAPE (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries) is the IEEPA refund function inside the ACE Portal. You upload a CAPE declaration listing entry numbers, and CBP removes the IEEPA duties and liquidates or reliquidates those entries in bulk (CBP CSMS #68340863). CBP has told importers not to use post-summary corrections to claim IEEPA refunds; CAPE is the administrative route.

Who can file a CAPE declaration? Only the IOR or the licensed customs broker that filed the original entries (GHY International). A forwarder, marketplace or customer cannot file for you, and a new broker cannot file for a previous broker's entries; the IOR can always file directly.

How do I file? Upload a CSV through the CAPE tab in ACE listing up to 9,999 entry numbers per declaration, with entry numbers only and no other fields; a template sits in the CAPE upload function. You can file as many declarations as you need. Expect cleanup: through Sept. 11, 6.1 million entries failed entry-level checks (GHY International).

What do the three phases cover? Phase 1 (April 20) covered unliquidated entries and entries liquidated within the prior 80 days, which CBP can still fix inside its 90-day voluntary reliquidation window under 19 U.S.C. § 1501. That slice was designed to cover an estimated 63% of affected entries. Phase 2 (June 29) added reconciliation-flagged entries (types 01, 02 and 06) with no reconciliation entry filed. Phase 3 (Oct. 6) added finally liquidated entries covered by a court reliquidation order.

What changed when Phase 3 opened on Oct. 6? Phase 3 opened a CAPE lane for finally liquidated entries, but only for CIT plaintiffs who submitted a valid IOR number by July 30, 2026. The bucket is estimated at about $11.4 billion (Advanced Logistics Solutions). Plaintiffs who submitted IOR numbers late are not disqualified: CBP has promised additional instructions, and Troutman Pepper Locke reports CBP has indicated they will be able to file on a rolling biweekly basis (Troutman Pepper Locke).

How long does an IEEPA refund take? CBP's guidance is 60 to 90 days after a CAPE declaration is accepted. Unliquidated entries liquidate 45 days after acceptance, and liquidated ones reliquidate the next business day (GHY International). A rejected file restarts the clock.

Do I need ACH to get paid? Yes. IEEPA refunds are paid electronically by ACH only, and CBP will not send a refund to Treasury without bank details on file. As of Sept. 11, 20,184 approved refunds worth $1.3 billion were stuck for exactly that reason (GHY International). The IOR, or its Form 4811 designee, needs to be enrolled for ACH refunds in ACE.

Do refunds include interest? Yes. CBP adds interest calculated under 19 CFR 24.36, the same method used for other customs refunds, so CAPE pays 100% of the IEEPA duty plus interest (Holland & Knight). CBP also offsets any debts you owe it before releasing the money, so the deposit is the net amount (GHY International).

Who receives the money: the importer, the broker or the customer? The refund goes to the IOR, or to a third party the IOR has designated on CBP Form 4811. That designation has to be in place before the CAPE declaration is filed; otherwise the refund defaults to the IOR, and a broker that files your declaration does not receive your refund through CAPE (BDO). Customers who paid you a tariff surcharge have no CAPE claim; what you owe them is a contract question.

Can I claim drawback and an IEEPA refund on the same entry? Yes, but sequence matters: file the CAPE declaration first. Entries with an active drawback claim are excluded from CAPE, so CBP's guidance is CAPE first, drawback second (CBP CSMS #68340863). Drawback is capped by law at 99% of eligible duties; CAPE pays 100% of the IEEPA duty plus interest.

My entry already carries a drawback flag. Is the IEEPA money lost? Not lost, but parked. When Trade Talk asked CBP in September about IEEPA entries stuck behind a drawback flag, the agency said they "will be addressed in a future deployment of CAPE." There is no date yet.

What does "finally liquidated" mean, and can I still recover? An entry is finally liquidated once both CBP's 90-day voluntary reliquidation window and the 180-day protest period under 19 U.S.C. § 1514 have passed. CBP has told the court it lacks authority to reliquidate those entries without a specific court order (National Law Review), so the only route today is a CIT reliquidation order, meaning plaintiff status. The July 2026 orders cover the roughly 3,700 cases pending before Judge Eaton (Morgan Lewis).

Should I protest liquidated entries that missed CAPE's window? If an entry is past CAPE's 80-day window but inside the 180-day protest period, a protest preserves an administrative route, and many importers are filing them (BDO). The trade-off: entries with open protests are excluded from CAPE.

Is there a deadline to file a CAPE declaration? No closing date has been announced as of Oct. 8, 2026. The deadlines that bite are per entry: CAPE's 80-day post-liquidation window, the 180-day protest period, then the CIT statute of limitations.

What is the statute of limitations for an IEEPA refund lawsuit? Two years. Suits at the Court of International Trade under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i) must be filed within two years after the claim accrues (28 U.S.C. § 2636(i)). BDO puts the earliest deadlines at Feb. 4, 2027 for fentanyl-tariff entries and April 5, 2027 for reciprocal-tariff entries (BDO), while Troutman measures from the date of deposit (Troutman Pepper Locke). Treat early February 2027 as the outer edge.

Do I need to sue? Only for finally liquidated entries, and only if a broader ruling doesn't reach you first. The government's Federal Circuit appeal argues finally liquidated refunds should go only to plaintiffs, and class certification in V.O.S. Selections was argued Aug. 6 and remained undecided at last check (GHY International). Troutman calls a CIT suit the most certain path (Troutman Pepper Locke). That decision belongs with trade counsel.

What is the Nov. 4 deadline? It is the comment deadline on CBP's information collection for the IEEPA refund worksheet (OMB Control Number 1651-0149), published as a 30-day notice on Oct. 5; comments go through Reginfo.gov (GHY International). It is not a refund-filing deadline.

For clean entries, CAPE has worked: $122 billion sent to Treasury in under five months is fast by customs standards. What remains is the hard tail of finally liquidated entries, drawback-flagged entries, AD/CVD entries and files that keep failing validation. We expect more CAPE deployments for those buckets, on CBP's timeline. Importers with clean ACH, Form 5106 and entry lists will be paid first when each lane opens. And if you hold finally liquidated entries, don't wait on a class ruling with a February 2027 clock running.

Related on Trade Talk: CAPE Phase 3: Who Qualifies, What to Expect, and Key Dates · IEEPA Refunds by the Numbers · Can You Claim Drawback on an IEEPA Refund Entry?

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